I have been obsessively
following the election for President of the United States for more than a
year, and this is something that sometimes surprises people. The drama
of it is both repellent and compelling. I cannot turn away from this
event that seems to move both in frustrating slow motion, but also at a
frenetic Mad Max-like pace, careening at frightening speed toward a
possible dystopia.

As a local decolonization activist, or someone
who is actively advocating for a change in our political status, my
obsessing over the U.S. presidential election can seem contradictory. As
a distant American colony on the edge of the Western Pacific, we don’t
get to participate in this election (except through a straw poll) and
the lone representative that we elect to send to Congress is a
non-voting member. But these contradictions are actually what draw me
into the drama, as they offer important reflective possibilities in
following an election that we can’t participate in, but potentially
determines the basic course of our island for the next four to eight
years.

An
important first step in conceiving decolonization is to be able to
understand what must change about the present. How the status quo may
constrict us in certain fundamental ways; how it may represent, in both
obvious and more insidious forms, types of injustices and inequality.
This can be difficult, because on the surface Guam’s number one industry
seems to be not tourism or the U.S. military presence, but rather
fantasizing that it is simply a browner, more humid faraway fragment of
the United States. A great deal of mental energy goes into how we
indoctrinate ourselves, in both formal and informal ways, to see
ourselves just like any other part of the U.S. Maybe we endure a little
bit more colonialism than you average corner of California, but
nonetheless, we’re Where America’s Day Begins!

This façade feels real to your average person on Guam, but it carries little truth. Taiminagahet ayu na siniente.
This is why the election is such an important time for rethinking our
relationship to the U.S. and to the world. As the circle of American
belonging stretches from sea to shining sea, with the aura of hundreds
of millions being included in the exercise of American democracy, our
particular portion of the tåsi doesn’t count. This is what
makes each presidential election a trove teeming with possibilities for
engaging people in discussions of political status.

As part of our
premiere industry of wishful American belonging, we eagerly import
platitudes on American exceptionalism and awesomeness. We throw them out
like candy at Liberation Day parades and flags on Memorial Day. We
patriotically profess the greatness of a nation that routinely doesn’t
include us in its self-concept. We say it represents this or represents
that, when those things haven’t been allowed to exist in Guam since Old
Glory was first raised here in 1898.

At the start of America’s own
democratic experiment, Benjamin Franklin said, “A great Empire, like a
great Cake, is most easily diminished at the Edges.”

In the
abstract it can be easy to pretend these platitudes are real. But in
reality, the closer times moves towards actual exercises of American
democracy, the more we see its limitations and its contradictions –
especially those that form our current comfortable, yet nonetheless
colonial, position.
Earlier
this year Voice of America, a U.S. government-funded multimedia news
source and its official external broadcasting institution, covered this
in an insightful article titled, “US Presidential Election Ends at
Conventions for Territorial Citizens.” It featured the voices of
Republican and Democratic delegates from Guam who were attending their
party conventions. In it, the delegates, such as our own Speaker of the
Guam Legislature Judith Won Pat, lamented how this is their lone real
role in this grand exercise of American democracy – to help nominate
candidates. Some expressed gratitude for being included, while others
said it makes them feel like they are second-class citizens, or not
really part of the U.S. Even these forms of participation are
problematic, as they don’t represent any fundamental tie to the U.S.,
just something allowed by the preference of political parties. Even
having delegate and convention votes smacks of the ephemeral and shallow
nature of our connection to the U.S. We’re not granted a fundamental
right to partake in this process, we’re simply allowed to, like a plus-one to a wedding; a conditional invitation to someone else’s party.

This
is that important point of reflection that drives my fascination with
the presidential election. Rather that continue to be dazzled by the
platitudes of American greatness, this is the moment when we should sahuma minagahet, inhale the tough truths that are appearing all around us.

Every
four years, we get reminders not of how strong our connection is to the
U.S., but rather how tenuous it is, how undemocratic it is. And there
are stirrings within our community as to whether or not we should seek
something more, either within the U.S. or without. As one elderly
Chamorro once told me, “Nina’i hao gi as Yu’os i chetnot-mu para un espiha i amot-mu.”

Looking
to the future, our relationship to the U.S. and its democracy has been a
Micronesian version of the Greek legend of Tantalus, something that always seems just out
of our reach and can never truly be ours. After more than a century of
colonial thirst, maybe it is time to pursue a grand governmental
experiment of our own?

Dr. Bevacqua is committed to the
decolonization of Guam and the revitalization of the Chamorro language.
He is currently working on a Chamorro translation of the Shakespearean
play “Othello.”

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Put Guahu / About Me

This blog is dedicated to Chamorro issues, the use and revitalization of the Chamoru language and the decolonization of Guam. This blog also aims to inform people around the world about the history, culture and language and struggles of the Chamorro people, who are the indigenous islanders of Guam, Saipan, Tinian, Luta and Pagan in the Mariana Islands. Pues Haggannaihon ha', ya taitai na'ya, ya Si Yu'us Ma'ase para i finatto-mu.

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The Revolution Will Not Be Haolified

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE HAOLIFIEDTinige’ as Guahu - 2003 (updated 2008)

You will not be able to ignore it che’lu * This time you will not be able to blame it all on Anghet * You will not be able to change channels * And watch Fear Factor, Rev TV of Salamat Po Guam because * The Revolution will not be televised

The revolution will not be televised, nor will it be advertised * It will not be sponsored by the Good Guys at Moylan’s or the better guys at AK. * It will not be something easily explained by radio callers * Whether they be Positively Local, Definitively Settler, or Surprisingly Coconut * It will not be cornered by the Calvos and explained by Sabrina Salas * Matanane * After the story about the incoming B-52’s or 1000’s of Marines careening towards to Guam, and how we * should be economically energized and not terrorized. * Jon Anderson will have no TT anecdotes about it * and Chris Barnett won’t malafunkshun it because the revolution will not be televised

The revolution will not be televised or editorialized * It will not be something canabilized with two inches here two inches there * Dubious headlines everywhere * Lee Weber will not edit it * Joe Murphy will not put it in his pipe and smoke it * Nor dream about it, or tell others the wonders and blunders of it. * There will be no letters to the editor quoting scriptures or denying its constitutionality * And there will be no American flag inserts saying these three colors just don’t run * As the revolution will not be editorialized

The revolution will not be televised or politicized * It will not play the same old gayu games * And promise you that same old talonan things. * The revolution will not wave at you as you drive by on Marine Drive * And seduce you with its hardworking eyes. * It will not be territorial or popular, and not encourage you with maolek blue. * The revolution will not put marang salaman po after its speeches to get more Filipino votes in the next election because the revolution will not be politicized

The revolution will not be televised, not be theorized * It will not be something GCC or UOG friendly. * There will be no books at Bestseller offering to help you lose something in 90 days * Or Rachel Ray helping you cook the revolution of your way. * Ron McNinch will not survey it * and will not poll people about their revolution of choice. * There will be no WASC review report demanding accountability demanding autonomy * And no beachcombing carpetbaggers will proclaim their own terminal authority * Over the histories, the laws, the thinking of those for whom they see nothing but corrupt and corrupting inferiority * The revolution will not be colonized

The revolution will not be televised, not be supersized. * The revolution will not be something you can buy at Ross, or get at blue light cost * It is not just red rice, kelaguan uhang, or popcorn with Tobacco sauce. * It doesn’t come with Coke and it doesn’t fit on a fiesta plate. * The revolution will not make you gof sinexy, cure your jafjaf, or make fragrant your fa’fa’ * The revolution will not force you to be where America’s empire begins * Or where Japan’s golf courses and Gerry Yingling’s credit card debt ends. * You won’t need a credit card, or be charged for the tin foil to cover your balutan * As the revolution will not be economized

The revolution will not be televised, blownback or militarized * There will be no more physical ordnance buried in people’s lands * And no more patrionizing propaganda buried in people’s minds * The revolution will not get you cheaper cases of chicken or increased commissary privileges. * It will not make freedomless flags feel more comfortable in your hands * Or make uniforms fit more snugly around your mind. * The revolution will not deny racism or exploitation * And not create histories about landfalls of destiny * But instead publicize the racism and evils of American hegemony. * The revolution will not be subsidized by construction contracts or the race of Senator Inouye or Congressman Burton * It will not be laid waste to by daisy cut budgets or Medicare spending limits * Instead it will be sustained by deep memories that refuse to die * The revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be televised and will not polarize based on blood or color * It will not make your skin lighter * It will not make your skin darker * It will not test your blood the way Hitler or Uncle Sam would of done * It will not hate some and love others based on their time of naturalization * Or incept date of their compacts of free association. * But the revolution will help some find comfort, find strength, find power * In their connections to the land and to each other * Allow some to discover the sovereignty that can be found in solidarity * The revolution will take and remake this consciousness that doesn’t need to be televised * But does need to be revolutionized * The revolution will not be haolified * The revolution will not be haolified